Noah, AKA @beebaaahp, is a five year-old boy. He likes playing Wii tennis (complains about line calls), having Mr. Man books read to him at bedtime, and snacking on string cheese and applesauce squeezies.

He’s a digital native; his little fingers have tapped and swiped the surfaces of iPads and iPhones practically his whole life. Once, while his parents were asleep early in the morning, he powered on the television set, toggled to the input for the Roku media player, selected a TV episode he wanted to watch on Amazon Instant, correctly guessed the password necessary to make a purchase, and started watching his show.

Noah is my son, and lately one of his favorite things is twitter. He asked several times to have his own account, and would often demand to tweet from my account (or do it without asking). He wanted to use the same media of communication that his parents use, to play with our toys. It seemed harmless enough, and I monitor his account pretty closely. Since I said ok in December, 2014, he has tweeted hundreds of times, followed more than 250 others, and collected around 50 followers. Not too shabby for a user just learning to read.

Noah goes to kindergarten all day M-F, and every afternoon he brings home the artworks he made at school, typically in the medium of marker on paper. Having a child in kindergarten really reveals the blurry line between culture and garbage. The creative work of our precious darlings must go in the trash almost all the time if we are not to suffocate under an ever-expanding oeuvre. But creativity play is about process as much as product.

I like to see Noah’s tweets as a digital analog to his art projects. He’s messing around and expressing himself and making things to give to others and exploring his imagination using the tools available. That the tweets are saved and published rather than admired insincerely and dropped in the kitchen receptacle when he isn’t looking is, in some ways, incidental. But this gives us an easy way of archiving the expressive record without amassing physical clutter, and it shares his life with others who might be interested to see a kid’s work.

Fine art photographer Vincent Bourilhon expresses his dreams of a dynamic, vibrant world through enchantingly whimsical images. The Paris-based creative, who first first picked up a camera at the age of 16, combines photography and digital manipulation for stunningly surreal results that invite viewers to get lost in otherworldly scenes and visual narratives. Since we last shared Bourilhon's work in 2013, the photographer has continued to surprise and stun with fresh, imaginative concepts. Some familiar motifs, such as airplanes, rainclouds, and magical jars, are reinterpreted in different ways, while other images explore new ideas and worlds. As always, Bourilhon's work is beautifully cinematic, with each shot resembling a still from a film filled with magic, adventure, and self-discovery. To purchase prints of Bourilhon's fantasy-inspired work, head on over to My Modern Shop. Vincent Bourilhon's website Vincent Bourilhon on Flickr Vincent Bourilhon Photography on…

If journalists want to raise real awareness of what is going on in the world, they can´t just offer the audience facts and images. They also have to give possibilities to feel the reality. Nonny de la Peña´s Project Syria is a great example of it.

Kate Abrosimova: "The craft of storytelling is experiencing a sea-change in its development. Putting a viewer in the event directly with the help of virtual reality technology is what journalists are likely to be doing in the next decade."

Winning Jeopardy was just a proof of concept. Now IBM's artificial brain has moved onto conquering health careand next, journalism.

Minna Kilpeläinen's insight:

"Watson isn’t going to "solve" investigative journalism, as if it were a great jigsaw puzzle, but it might speed things up and help us deal with scale, and it might help identify overlooked starting points and leads for journalists to delve into. Still, as much as Watson appears to be smart, it lacks human traits, like creativity, judgment, empathy, and ethics."

The 27th annual International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is one of the largest and most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world.

Minna Kilpeläinen's insight:

Eli Brown saw nearly 50 pitches in The International Film Festival Amsterdam. He noticed 10 things that should be covered to make a deal in documentary business in 2015.

What makes documentary worth making (at least for the buyers) is to make sure you have access to a compelling main character. And what seems to be even better: you have access or you yourself are part of the community you make the documentary about. It seems that character-driven documentaries are still the main trend, but in my opinion different kind of innovative forms could be refereshing. If you want buyers to get excited to your documentary, you should give a taste of your new form in the trailer. Anyway, you have to know your audience and the profiles of the channels and broadcasters. Today crime seems to be a subject that interests audiences despite culture. Documentarist is just the right person to give voice to those who haven´t had it. Give platform to those voices.

Traditional print media like The Guardian or The New York Times is more and more interested in video. That´s good news to documentary film makers. That makes more platforms to good documentaries.

Pitching skills are crucial for film makers, but it is good to remember that "a great pitch is not necessarily a great documentary and vice versa”. You have to learn to make a compelling trailer to a compelling documentary. These are different kind of art forms - you need to know how to make a good commercial.

Your track record matters of course. Success follows success. Try to make your piece as good as no one else.

Storytelling Parade, our filmmaking contest with heart, has come to its first official close!

Over the past months, we asked filmmakers to rally together. Not for us, not for themselves, and not even for the prizes. We asked them to rally together to tell the story of individuals or organizations doing good for the world—to share their stories in hopes of inspiring the world.

Simon Staffans: "First, a full disclaimer. I’m writing this post not so much for you, dear reader, as I’m doing it for myself. Let me explain. As I’m increasingly working with people who have no or little experience of transmedia" ...

Only Bloody Human is the first ever 100%, socially-driven, community-created Adventure Travel Web Series dedicated to extreme expeditions and super-human journeys; we give everyday people like you the opportunity to take part in these incredible feats of resilience and endurance, available to anyone and everyone across the globe; we can all play a part in any capacity we desire, and lead it to it's success!

Inspired by the Quipu, the knotted thread communication system of the Inca Empire, this project captures the stories of people affected by Peru’s unconsented sterilization policy, which targeted over 300,000 indigenous women in the 1990s.

Minna Kilpeläinen's insight:

This project isn´t new, but worth reminding about. This interactive documentary gave voice to women who had been silenced for 20 years. No more.

A 2014 Nielsen Digital Consumer Report said that 84 percent of U.S. smartphone and tablet owners watch television with a second screen in hand. Second screen action is definitely something networks should explore and figure out how to engage viewers to their content. Question is, how do networks and other media companies build interactive web platforms for today’s viewers?

Second screen action often happens on social channels that networks don’t own, and therefore can’t control, but they do have the ability to capture and amplify what’s happening.

Fishman suggests that one way media companies could approach the second screen is to create original and exclusive digital video content that stands apart from linear broadcast programming. That means focusing strongly on transmedia storytelling. Media concepts no longer contain only tv-programmes, you have to produce a multiplatform experience from the beginning.

Author’s disclaimer: This article is aimed toward commercial, business-to-business photographers. Consumer photographers may get something from it as well, but there are different market forces at work in that genre.

"Perhaps it is time for photographers to start focusing on what they deliver: visual solutions. engagement, and brand awareness.

And those solutions may be photographs, photo illustrations, motion, full video, social media graphics, Instagram/Vine combos… whatever it takes to create something that helps a client grow their business."

“There is something about the internet that isn’t working anymore,” is the line that opens filmmaker Jonathan Minard’s short documentary on Deep Lab—a group of women hackers, artists, and theorists who gathered at Carnegie Mellon University in December to answer the question of what, exactly, that disquieting “something” is. The film premieres on Motherboard today.

What Deep Lab represents is just as hard to pin down as the “something” invoked in the opening minutes of Minard’s short film. Is it a book, a lecture series, or Minard’s documentary—all of which were put together in under a month? Is it an ethos? Is it feminist? Is Deep Lab a charrette, a dugnad, or a “congress,” as its participants called it?

It’s hard to say what Deep Lab is in part because of its scattershot nature, both in terms of its products and its focus. The Deep Lab book—available for free online—is a 242-page collection of essays, fragments, and reflections on everything from encryption to cyberfeminism penned by a dozen different authors with divergent interests.

Deep Lab’s interdisciplinary approach is perhaps necessary to parse the complicated realities of the post-Snowden age. Since Snowden’s revelations regarding the scope of the US government’s online surveillance program broke in 2013, it seems as though the internet has taken on a new, dark, and confusing identity.

Larger-than-life interests in the form of corporate and governmental surveillance are now at play in our daily interactions on the internet, and interpreting those outsized realities so we can understand them is no small challenge.

A new wave of creators is blurring the lines of storytelling to span multiple platforms. Here, a handful of those creators from this year's New York Film Festiv

Minna Kilpeläinen's insight:

Some call it transmedia, others immersive and non-linear storytelling or interactive filmmaking. Convergence is what it´s about. Different forms and platforms of storytelling come together in one, yet very multi-dimensional concept.

The research shared in this article is quite surprising. The latest data shared from Forrester Research shows that top brands posting on Facebook and Twitter reach only about 2% of their audience. Engagement stats are even worse -- a mere 0.07% of followers actually interact with posts.

Yikes!

And what does this have to do with business storytelling? Well, one thing it might be pointing to is that if you want to share and gather stories from audiences, social media might be the wrong place. Forrester concludes that the best way to engage customers and prospects is through email.

We already know that blog posts, email and email newsletters allow for better storytelling and are still very popular. You have more space, and can craft better stories. Social media posts are more like conversations, where stories may or may not show up. But as we know, stories create higher engagement if you tap into the dynamic of story sharing (that means equal activity on both story listening and storytelling).

As we get more sophisticated in business storytelling, part of that maturity may be learning the best mediums for storytelling instead of thinking that every medium will work.

The recommendation about email makes sense to me. So you might want to read this article, understand a bit more about the research and recommendations, and go make adjustments accordingly.

What do you think about what this research says, and what will you be doing differently? Inquiring minds want to know ...

A good story can make or break a presentation, article, or conversation. But why is that? When Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich started to market his product through stories instead of benefits and bullet points, sign-ups went through the roof.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.